Rhea Letter

On January 6, 1818, Andrew Jackson, then department commander in the Southwest, wrote to President Monroe regarding the Seminole troubles in Florida and advising the prompt seizure of East Florida, which he declared could be done ‘‘ without implicating the Government.’’ He offered to accomplish the seizure himself within sixty days, if it should be indicated tohim that it were desirable. John Rhea, a Congre man from Tenne ee, was the secret channel through which he hoped Monroe's a ent might be signified. It was not. In 1831, during Jackson’s administration, in the height of his quarrel with Calhoun, which turned in part upon the Seminole affair, Rhea wrote to Monroe, hoping to elicit from him something that would implicate him as approving Jackson's plan. Monroe, on his death-bed in New York, denounced Rhea’s insinuations as utterly false.